Prerequisite: Strength 13 or higher

You've developed the skills necessary to hold your own in close-quarters grappling. You gain the following benefits:

You have advantage on attack rolls against a creature you are grappling.

You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.

Grappler: Free Hugs

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Players (myself included) love a good wrestler character. Something about watching massive hulks of men slam each other with chairs and throw them out of giant deathmatch boxes is just fun. D&D gives us the Grappler feat to empower characters towards that fantasy. It fails so spectacularly to deliver I consider it bad for the game.

Out the gate, grappling rules aren’t typically well known. There tends to be a lot of confusion around how it works; when can you do it? What bad things happen to the grappled creature? Can I grapple with an attack of opportunity? Nested deep within the combat rules is a little four paragraph blurb about it.

For a grapple to happen at all, the following must be true:

You have a free hand (or appendage like a tentacle).

The creature is within your reach (typically within 5 feet of you).

The creature is no more than one size larger than you.

Then, you make a contested Strength (Athletics) check against the enemy's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. Should you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition (its speed becomes 0). The condition ends if you become incapacitated, or if the creature is moved outside your reach. The grappled creature can spend its action attempting to escape, and you remake the contested check with it, ending the effect early should it succeed. Finally, you can drag creatures with you as you move, but it halves your speed unless the creature is two sizes smaller than you.

All of this is to say you need to meet all these conditions and win the contested check for the best outcome being the creature's speed becomes zero. That’s it. You don’t get any other inherent advantages. A grappled creature can still take whatever actions it wants normally; it can attack you freely, attack your friends if they’re in range, make ranged weapon attacks, cast spells, use special abilities, the works. All you’ve done by grappling it is make its speed zero. That’s a pretty rough deal, and leads it to be something you’ll do rarely.

Bringing it back around to the Grappler feat, now you’re getting a tiny upgrade! You can spend one of your attacks that’d you make as a part of your attack action (which is normally just one in the low tiers) to then get advantage on attack rolls against the grappled creature. It doesn’t help allies, you can’t throw it around or do damage to it in other ways. You forgo an attack to potentially get advantage on a subsequent attack. You know what that sounds like? True Strike! And nobody is ever excited to cast True Strike!

The pinned portion is actively detrimental. You have to spend your action pinning it, which restrains both you and the restrained creature. Restrained creatures speed is 0 (meaning you can no longer move yourself) while the creature you’re grappling already had this penalty. Creatures have advantage on attack rolls against restrained creatures (which you would already have on the grappled creature from this feat), and disadvantage on attacks against other creatures (putting it net neutral with its attacks against you). Finally, you have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws. Basically, you’re offering everyone advantage on attacks against both of you for your action, and removing all of your speed at the same time. Oh, and it takes your ENTIRE action to pin a creature, not just one of your attacks made with the attack action. You and the other restrained creature can still take regular actions; still cast spells, attack stuff, dodge, whatever. Talk about terrible.

Grappler finds its way onto players who want to play the wrestler fantasy or grappling lock-down frontliner, and encourages them to kill themselves. It asks you to stop hitting your enemies, stop moving, and do nothing. It's boring, slow, harmful to the user, and at its best, is replacing an attack roll for possible advantage. Just attack it. Don’t waste an attack trying to grapple it unless it's fleeing. The feat does nothing to expand the grappler fantasy. Don’t take it.

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